Source: Southern Voice, Associated Press via WTVM
Montgomery, Ala. -- LGBT advocates expressed both surprise and delight when the Alabama House on Tuesday passed a bill that would expand the state's existing hate crimes law to cover crimes committed against people because of their sexual orientation.

"It is a very happy day to be gay in Alabama," Danny Upton, executive director of Equality Alabama. "I'm just almost speechless," he told Atlanta's Southern Voice. "This is something that people told us could never happen."

But, if the House vote was unexpected good news, then a vote on Thursday by the Senate's judiciary committee on Thursday was even better news.

Advocates hadn't expected the bill to be considered this year in the Senate, but on Thursday the bill passed in the Senate committee. That puts the bill in line for consideration by May 19, which will be the final meeting day of the 2008 legislative session, Associated Press reports.

The bill narrowly passed the House, 46-44, when a Republican lawmaker who had become friends with lesbian state Rep. Patricia Todd backed the proposal, Southern Voice reports.

"We both got elected at the same time," Todd said. "She sits behind me on the floor, so we talk a lot, and I think she’s just one of those independent-minded people that votes based on her own personal beliefs and not on what the party tells her."

Todd had not expected the bill, which advanced in the House at the legislative session's end, to see a Senate vote this year according to Southern Voice's Joshua Lynsen.

Democratic state Rep. Alvin Holmes of Montgomery got Alabama's current hate crimes law enacted in 1994, and he has been trying to expand it ever since.

Full article: N.C., Ind. primaries may signal end of Clinton’s campaign | Southern Voice
Alabama Set to Pass Hate Crime Legislation | WTVM (AP)